The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo

Stieg Larsson’s mystery novel adapted for the big screen

The sound of the
packing envelope being cut open is as loud and jarring as the breaking of
bones. In the opening scene of The Girl
With the Dragon Tattoo, an aging corporate baron, Henrik Vanger,
tremblingly opens the package in the lonely elegance of his study. He can guess
the contents, but cries softly anyway when he opens it to find a carefully
framed and matted bluebell, much like the ones he has received by mail on his
birthday from an anonymous sender every year for decades. They remind him of
the bluebells his favorite niece, Harriet, presented to him before she vanished
from the Vangers’ island compound many years ago.

Directed by
Swedish filmmaker Niels Arden Oplev from a best-selling mystery novel by his
countryman, Stieg Larsson, The Girl With
the Dragon Tattoo is a subtitled thriller with an anxiety about the tyranny
of the powerful, especially of men over women. Although the film clocks in at
more than two and a half hours, it never drags or feels long or overstuffed.
The mystery at the heart of the plot seems a bit convoluted in the end, but the
ride is swift and well upholstered, shocking scenes of sexual cruelty and all.

Although the
protagonist seems to be Mikael Blomkvist, a Swedish Bob Woodward framed in a
libel case by a corrupt industrialist and facing a short term in Sweden’s Motel
6-like prison system, the real star is the eponymous tattooed girl. Lisbeth is
a severe Goth with jet-black hair and multiple piercings, a 21st-century Irma
Vep on a motorcycle. When old Henrik Vanger hires Blomkvist to investigate the
1960s-era disappearance of Harriet, Lisbeth becomes the reporter’s shadow,
hacking into his work files and avidly following his leads. Finally, they make
contact and become partners in unlocking a mystery hidden in the deep closet of
a family with many secrets.

Blomkvist’s story
is straightforward enough—a successful middle-aged media figure with a divorce
behind him. Lisbeth, however, is an enigma gradually unpeeled—a 24-year old
private investigator with a criminal record. When her new probation officer,
who has legal guardianship over her finances, forces her to exchange degrading
sex acts for access to her own money, she becomes the avenging fury in black.
In the age of mini-cameras, anything can be recorded and circulated.

Her interest in
Blomkvist’s investigation is tied to her own pattern of abuse at the hands of
men with squalid values. Harriet might have been raped and murdered by someone
in her own family. So believes Henrik, apparently the only honorable member of
a family that supported Sweden’s
tiny Nazi Party in the 1930s. The Vangers are, he confesses, a greedy,
worthless clan of the small-minded and power-mad. Naturally, someone is
determined to thwart reopening Harriet’s case by any means.

Filmed in the
melancholy shades of a pale Swedish twilight, The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo is a suspenseful murder-mystery in
territory similar to Kenneth Branagh’s television mini-series “Wallander,”
based on the detective novels by Sweden’s Henning Mankell. It’s a
story of men whose lust for power knows no moral limits and an argument on the
nature of evil. Blomkvist, the aging liberal, thinks evil behavior results from
bad nurturing. The streetwise Lisbeth believes it’s a choice made freely.

If you've read the book you might be slightly disappointed by the screenplay that ignores some key characters in this great series. However just sit back and enjoy the ride. The essence of the complex relationship between Salander and Blomkvist is there.